The crowd cheered while Shiga put his golok away and stepped out of the ring.

The announcer walked over to where Shiga was.

“Congratulations! Let me see your badge so that I can add in year leader permissions.” (Announcer)

When Shiga handed him his badge, the announcer took out a different badge. This new badge glowed for a moment before a stream of light entered into Shiga’s badge. The announcer handed the badge back to Shiga once it stopped glowing.

“As a year leader you have new responsibilities and benefits. You must accept every challenge, though you can delay in critical times, and you must also punish those who break the rules. As for the benefits, year leaders each have their own cultivation rooms and they get one additional pill and scroll per month. There will also be a meeting of all of the year leaders every month. Do you understand?” (Announcer)

“I understand. Thank you.” (Shiga)

Shiga walked away from the duel arena and went straight back to his dorm. Once there he sat down to meditate and think.

He had only won that fight because he had a good matchup. If his opponent had any significant defence the fight could have easily gone the other way because Shiga did not have any powerful attacks. He also needed to prepare for challengers. He would be safe for a small time, but soon enough someone was going to learn a new technique and try to defeat Shiga with it. After pondering, Shiga decided that for now he needed to quickly raise his cultivation. Tomorrow he would look at the different pills he could get as well as the year leader cultivation room. After that, Shiga decided he would also look for magic tools and a powerful attack skill.

Having finally come to a decision, Shiga retired for the night. His sleep was peaceful and the next morning he woke up feeling well rested.

The first place Shiga went to was the alchemy pavilion. He followed the crowd of disciples there to where he could buy pills. Several disciples stared and whispers abounded, but no one did anything else. After a few moments of waiting in the line, Shiga arrived at a counter in front of a cheerful looking clerk.

“Hello and welcome to the pill center Senior Shiga! What types of pills were you looking for?” (Clerk)

“Greetings. I am looking for pills with large quantities of Qi and body refining pills.” (Shiga)

“Ok. Hold on a few moments while I go grab the pills. However, we don’t have many level 1 pills of those types. Do you want me to grab the level 2 pills as well?” (Clerk)

Shiga pondered a moment. He was allowed 2 free level 1 pills a month, but he could use his free pills to get a single level 2 pill.

“Just the level 1 pills will be fine for now.” (Shiga)

“In that case I will be right back.” (Clerk)

True to his word, the clerk came back a few minutes later with several pills.

“These are the different varieties of pills we have. There were 4 pills with large amounts of Qi, but only 1 body refining pill. The first pill is a basic low quality Qi recovery pill. The second is called the firecracker. It has a decent amount of Qi, but it is all fire attributed and it is released very suddenly so not many people take it. The third pill is a low quality Qi attraction pill. It doesn’t have much Qi on its own, but it makes it easier to absorb ambient Qi. The fourth pill is a Qi cleansing pill. It helps to clear out impurities in Qi which has a similar result to increasing Qi. And then there is the body foundation pill. It doesn't refine the body, but it does help the body to develop more, making it better for those beginning training.” (Clerk)

“Hmm. I will take the body foundation pill for sure, but for the other… I will go with the Qi attraction pill.” (Shiga)

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“Ok then. Please let me see your badge for a few moments.” (Clerk)

Shiga handed the clerk his badge and a few seconds later, the clerk returned it along with the pills Shiga chose. Shiga put the Qi attraction pill in his pocket, but he offered the body foundation pill to Quezota who happily munched on it. The clerk’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw Quezota eating the pill.

“Gaah! I thought it was just a hat!” (Clerk)

Shiga merely smiled at the clerk’s surprise before heading out of the pill center. As he stepped out Shiga was noticed once again by the crowd of disciples, but none of them stepped forward to challenge him so Shiga moved on.

The cultivation rooms were actually located in a large underground complex within a hill. There was originally a cave system and when the founder of the sect had gone in, he had discovered that it had a large amount of ambient Qi within it. As the sect grew, the caves were expanded and built to look like a building. Within the hill there were thousands of cultivation rooms, but most of them were barely two people wide and long enough to lay down in. As Shiga navigated the labyrinthine halls, he saw many disciples entering and leaving the rooms.

Eventually Shiga came to where all of the year leader rooms were located. There were many fewer rooms in this section, but they were all much larger and had inscriptions to attract more Qi. Shiga placed his medallion in the door to the cultivation room to prove he was a year leader and gain entry.

The inside was sparsely decorated with a large mat in the center of the room, a bed to one side, and a table on the other. The room was filled with Qi though and when Shiga began to cultivate it poured like a river into his dantian.

For the rest of the day Shiga simply sat in the room and cultivated. He grew his planet as much as he could and despite the size it had reached, progress was still going even faster than when he had started cultivating. However this didn’t last because as his planet grew the amount of Qi he required to continue increased exponentially.

By the end of the day Shiga could feel his progress slowing down once again. The progress he made was astonishing though. Where his planet had been the size of a small asteroid, it was now the size of a dwarf planet. This huge jump in size had also caused a huge jump in Shiga’s power. His body had not progressed much, but now he had huge amounts of Qi he could channel to increase his power, stamina, and skills.

Shiga spent the night in the cultivation room solidifying his planet while passively absorbing more Qi. The next morning he left the cultivation rooms to go look at the bazaar. He had seen how much quicker it was to practice with resources and was going out to look for anything that would help him get more Qi for cultivating.

The bazaar was really a large clearing that was filled with thousands of stalls being run by disciples and merchants alike. The bazaar was filled with even more disciples than the cultivation rooms causing it to be filled with the noise of people buying, selling, and haggling over prices.

Shiga slowly wandered around the bazaar to get an idea of where things were and what was being offered. Close to the entrance there were lots of consumable charms and pills. Towards the center of the bazaar there were armors and weapons in abundance while the outer edges had almost everything else mixed around.

Shiga wasn’t interested in weapons or charms, but items that could help him cultivate so he started looking at the edges of the bazaar. He was astounded by the diversity in magic tools. There were brushes, daggers, rocks, statues, drums, and almost anything else Shiga could think of.

At one stall there were several bottles that had inscriptions to collect Qi. Shiga picked one up and haggled the price down to 75 peros. After paying, Shiga was about to move on when his eye was caught by a strange looking drum. It was a wooden drum shaped like a puffed up tube. It was painted with simple geometric designs. The strange part of the drum was that when Shiga hit the drum, it sounded like the beating of a heart. A decidedly disturbing sound to come from a drum, but it caught Shiga’s attention. It was priced at 300 peros, but Shiga managed to haggle it down to 250.

Having spent most of his money, Shiga went back to the dorms. There was still day left, so Shiga started looking at the bottle with inscriptions to collect Qi. He could see the inscriptions fairly easily, so he tried to draw them onto a piece of wood that he had. Nothing happened so Shiga tried to draw it with Qi. This time some Qi began to gather, but the inscription quickly faded away.

Feeling that he had been making progress, Shiga tried to draw the inscription while laying Qi in the right pattern. It took a couple tries to get the coordination down, but eventually he managed to get the hang of it. The resulting inscription lasted longer, but soon the ink and the Qi both began to fade away. Once it faded away, Shiga tried to carve the simply inscription into the wood while drawing with Qi, but it was nearly impossible and took far too long. Getting a little frustrated, Shiga condensed the inscription out of Qi and practically slammed it into the piece of wood. This ended up leaving part of the inscription engraved in the wood, but because it didn’t hit evenly the inscription wasn’t perfectly engraved.

Having realized what he needed to do, Shiga began to practice on pressing the inscription into the wood to engrave it. It took a lot of effort, both to maintain the Qi’s shape and to force it into the wood, yet soon he started to make even more progress. When Shiga was finally able to consistently get a decent inscription through this method he decided to rest. It was already well into the night, so he just put everything away and went to sleep.

The next day Shiga went to the bazaar to buy a few normal bottles. Once he had them, Shiga went over to the cultivation rooms.

In the cultivation room, Shiga began trying to put the inscription he had copied onto the bottles. One bottle shattered, but the other two managed to survive the process once Shiga started getting the feel for it.

He let them sit to slowly gather Qi while he cultivated some more. By the end of the day the bottles disappointingly only had small droplets of condensed Qi. Combined, they barely covered the bottom of one of the bottles. Not great, but it was still progress, and given a month the bottles would be full enough to be of some use.

Shiga though about what he should do now while he swirled the Qi around in the bottle. The bottles only required three parts to work: the bottle, the inscription, and the environment. The environment was absolutely the least limiting factor of the bottles for now. The bottles themselves were made of cheap glass, but Shiga didn’t have any money left that he could spend on better materials. That left the inscription as the factor to improve.

Shiga shook his head and stood up. He would worry about the efficiency of the bottles in the morning. He still had an extra scroll he could get from the sect because he was a year leader so he could probably find a scroll about inscriptions that he could use.